


The Fishmonger and The Shark

by abyssinianserengeti



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Historical, D/s overtones, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Schehezerade, dub-con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 08:31:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abyssinianserengeti/pseuds/abyssinianserengeti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this <a href="http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/2246.html?thread=3680198#cmt3680198">prompt</a> on the kinkmeme: Hannibal as a king who kills and eats his wives after one night.<br/>Will as Scheherazade, the smart and gentle man who volunteers to marry Hannibal and captivates him by telling him stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Scheherazade is the storyteller of the 1001 Arabian Nights. This draws from the universe of the Islamic Golden Age but is mostly fictional, taking great liberties with the culture of the time.

إن من البيان لسحرا إن وراء الأَكَمةِ ما وراءها أنا الغريق فما خوفي من البلل  
 _I'm already drowning so why should I fear getting wet?_

The news travelled quickly. Within a day, everyone in the capital knew: _he’s killed another._ Will heard it from the cloth merchant, flaunting his richly dyed rolls of silk the next plot over. It was a dry, hot day. No one lingered. His fish went quick; large red and grey mullets, their eyes glassy. A bucket of silver cod sat in rapidly melting cubes of ice. He smelt of claustrophobic sweat and raw innards.

“You heard?” the cloth merchant said as he watched Will pack up, his last morning catches sold for half his usual price, eager to get inside before the midday sun started to beat.

He glanced up, and then went back to loading a small cart (well, it was really just a wooden board on two wheels).

The merchant was undeterred; after all, business wouldn’t start up again until early evening, when it cooled enough for it to be bearable outside. He took a finger and cut across his neck, pulling a face. “The Emperor’s sick of another one. What is it, his thirtieth-sixth?”

Will stopped to wipe the sweat from his eyes and scratch at the rough wool of his jerkin. It was enough time for him to do a quick calculation. The Emperor had killed a consort a month for exactly three years.

“Wonder what he does with the bodies...does he have a collection of skulls on pikes, you think?”  
Will only shrugged in response.

Taking hold of two long beams, he put one over either shoulder and began to pull the cart behind him. Nodding vaguely at the merchant, who, quite used to his ways, only tipped his head and gave him an odd salute. Avoiding the piles of dung on the ground, he heaved all the way back down the Main Road until the gravel became dirt and the dirt became muddy passages squeezed between mud brick buildings with arched doorways without doors. He was no longer avoiding animal waste, but all the rivets of human shit that gathered in dug out trenches on either side of the actual street. Of course, the sewage wasn’t always contained to these trenches, and the biting flies certainly weren’t. Will was almost glad the flies were more attracted to the excrement, otherwise they’d be clinging to the sweat on his back and neck and arms.

“Are you Wlym?”

He had barely dropped the cart, rolling his aching shoulders, when a man in full ceremonial armour accosted him.

“Are you Wlym or not?” he repeated with more than a little edge. Will lifted an eyebrow. Surely it wasn’t necessary to be decked out in so much leather and etched metal in such weather. Maybe they forgot how hot it gets up in the palace, where everything was always just so. Not that its famed cool gardens and chilled sweet drinks helped all those dead consorts, he thought wryly.

“Yes,” he managed, gingerly sidestepping the man and all his pomposity, the shade of his own mud brick calling to him. It was not entirely his own, to be sure. He shared it with a family of seven and as many strays as he could afford to feed. There was a corner that was all his own and that was enough room for his fishing gear, his buckets, and his thrush mat.

The man followed in, nose crinkling. He looked around in distaste and seemed to have switched to breathing through his mouth. When Will ignored him in favour of setting down his things and letting the three dogs who’d chosen to stay inside lick the residue fishy taste off his fingers, the man cleared his throat and stood rather noisily to attention.

“I am here on behalf of Emperor Lekktr of the Šeherzada Kingdom, Shahryar and King of Kings, son of no man, father of all people, most refined of taste and mind –“

“I’m sorry,” Will frowned and pretended to think, “but I can’t really figure out why I care.”

The man was gobsmacked for a minute. Then he scowled, “It is time for a Selection. His Imperial Highness is in need of a consort. By tonight.”

“If he was that desperate maybe he shouldn’t have murdered the last one.”

“You will be silent in the presence of the Emperor!”

He looked the man up and down, “are you the Emperor?”

“I am a representative of the Honourable Family of Lek—“

“I thought he was ‘son of no man’,” Will mimicked and sat upon his mat, cross legged and unperturbed by the man’s astonishing height. “Must be a pretty small family to serve. You should be so proud.”

The soldier stammered. Every shift of his weight caused the pieces of his armour to clink and rattle. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face, which had gone a dark red colour matching the dried fish blood beneath Will’s nails.

“You are a obnoxious little street rat and I will not have you insulting the Honourable –“

“I wasn’t insulting them, I was insulting you,” Will said flippantly and began to stroke the fur of one of the dogs, ignoring the fuming man and hoping he would give up. “What is it you want, anyway? I can’t decide whether I want you out of my house more than you want to leave. Either way, it’s better you either arrest me or you go on your merry, sweaty way.”

“I am not here to arrest you. I am here to interview you for Selection,” the man said after a moment of flabbergasted shock.

“They already did. I wasn’t cleared.”

He frowned, “You’re lying.”

Will gestured to himself and then at the surrounds, the dirty floors, the lack of windows, the ceiling with a large gap in the rushes letting dappled sunlight through. “Do I look like consort material?”

The man hesitated but continued bravely, “Every unmarried man or woman between ages fourteen and ages twenty-four must be screened for Selection.”

“And the palace screened me, and I failed. A year ago, and two months, to be precise. Is that all?”

“You were personally requested.”

Now Will was genuinely surprised. His hand stilled upon fur, “By the Emperor?”

“By High Vizier Yakkob Qal-Fawjd.”

“You mean Jack?” Will frowned and pictured a short-tempered, steel tongued, grizzled fighter dressed in simple black cloth. He’d screened Will, at a time when all the eligible males had been rounded up; tempted by rewards of paraffin and good corn if they appeared for what had been an ‘Unorthodox Selection.’ After twenty-two female consorts had been taken and found lacking, the High Viziers suspected the Emperor’s preferences were in the opposite direction. That month, he’d taken a boy, and the entire kingdom had held its collective breath.

Will remembered waiting with other kids, shivering in an autumn breeze, so high above the capital, marvelling at the view. They’d mostly been the poorer lot, lured with promises of charity. The more well-to-do didn’t send their sons to that shame. But Will hadn’t complained, in fact, he’d secretly been happy that those that hadn’t needed the oil and grain hadn’t come. More for the rest of them.

He remembered Jack, assembling them into rows, walking up and down and observing them like they were chattel. He hadn’t known then what drew the Vizier’s eye to him, of all the other dirty, shaking boys. But Jack had spoken to him, put hands on his body, and asked question after inane question. One of his answers had been deemed unsatisfactory. They’d chosen another. Will had breathed a sigh of unspeakable relief, taken his reward and gone to bed with the knowledge that once he’d failed a screening, he’d never be subjected to Selection. Ever again.

“Why does Jack want with me?”

“We who know our place do not ask our superiors impertinent questions,” the man sniffed. “Follow me.”

“What?” Will stumbled to his feet, “Tonight?”

But the man was already out the door. He really considered not following, maybe running around the corner and seeking sanctuary in a neighbour’s home. A consort? Was there any worse fate than to be stifled under the finery of the palace, forced to pleasure a sadistic king and then be beheaded for your troubles? Will wanted to flee. But he knew if Jack had personally asked for him, there was no way he’d last out in the slums once the palace put a price on his person and demanded he be arrested. People needed the money down here. If Will had been in their position, he’d turn himself in without a second blink.  
Head bowed, trying hard to ignore the stares people gave him from the shadow of their doorways, he followed the decorated soldier to his steed.

“Do you know how to ride?”

The man mounted and stared imperiously down his ruddy nose at Will. The fishmonger shook his head. This seemed to please the knight.

“Then you will walk behind me,” he kicked the horse into a rapid trot and immediately Will struggled to keep pace, “And be sure not to fall behind.”

With the midday sun well and truly scorching, Will wanted to cave in the man’s helmet and ask him whether he’d ever been this far south of the ornate palace gates. The streets here were worse than the inside of a bazaar. He’d be separated before they even got to the Main Road.

“Hurry up!”

He was two horse lengths away already and Will was feeling the fatigue. It was an uphill climb to the top of the mountain. If Jack wanted a possible consort with two functioning legs, he should have sent a courier with less of a superiority complex.

“Will?”

It was a girl, sixteen, her head covered in a white headscarf to reflect the heat. He recognised her by her wide doe eyes and voice only.

“Is everything okay?”

“Um...actually, Abigail, could you try to make sure someone’s feeding the dogs?”

“You’re going away?”

“Er...yeah. There’s something that I need to sort out. Just make sure no one in the neighbourhood decides they want dog meat for dinner, okay?”

He could sense her worry even without seeing her features but she nodded nonetheless and Will, not willing to keep eye contact any longer, dashed away in search of the bobbing head of the soldier. It wasn’t surprising that he lost horse and rider before long, and soon Will was wondering why he wasn’t simply turning around and making a dash for his freedom. He could follow the Eastern Road down to the sea where he could smuggle himself onto a merchant’s boat until they made for foreign lands. He could take the Western Road into the mountains and seek shelter in the villages there, maybe grow out his beard, gain some weight and use a new name. He could go off road and meet up with the nomads, who answered to no Emperor, plead his case and beg for their assistance.

And yet he found himself trudging up the Main Road during the hottest part of the day for no other reason than sheer, damning curiosity. He passed the cloth merchant, who was taking a nap under a sheet of canvas, and wondered with a dull ache whether he’d ever get to set up alongside the old gossip again. Up here where the road opened up, he caught sight of his guide, who struggled to keep the perfect posture someone so adorned was required to wear. Will set his shoulders a little straighter and took some measure of comfort from the fact that he wasn’t the only one struggling for breath.

The nice part of town, sidled up close to the palace, was an alien world. The houses were painted, their windows fitted with coloured glass, their roofs tiled. Some had small gardens with boxed hedges. Some had water features. A strange vision, or perhaps it was a memory, of having been in one of those privileged buildings washed over him. He paused, trying to hold onto the itching sensation he had once been here, but it was gone in the haze of sun and sheer exhaustion.

“Open up!”

The heavy metal gates eased open, revealing a tiled courtyard presenting a steep set of stairs. The soldier hopped off his horse as an elephant into a puddle. A stable hand dressed three times better that Will came out to take the reins and led the dehydrated creature away.

“Who’s this?” one of the gate guards asked.

“Qal-Fawjd's whelp.”

“Huh, for the Emperor?”

The second guard came up behind Will and pressed a palm into the small of his back. “He’s got a nice ass. Bet the King’ll love fucking that for a month.”

The three shared in guffaws, the one who’d touched Will quirking his eyebrow. Only the glint of his sword deterred Will from launching himself at the man and gouging his eyes out.

Instead he settled with a quiet, “At least it’s a month, the Emperor didn’t even ask for any of you. Or maybe you’re too valuable to waste. One can only imagine the kind of training that goes into opening and shutting the palace gates five times a day.”

“You little –“

The blow took him from beneath the jaw and punched upwards. Will reeled back, feeling like his neck had snapped. The inside of his mouth was bleeding and for a moment, everything sounded like rain.

“You _filthy_ little –“

He was more prepared for the second hit, already doubling over so the kick to his kidneys didn’t hurt as much as it would have. It still took the breath out of him, but Will had been abused by an upset donkey not three months ago and in comparison, the guard’s attack was really only a very firm hug.

“I hope he rips you open when he sticks you on his –“

One second he was squinting at the purple faced, drooling thing and the next, his world went rapidly white and then nothing.

*

There was light like the glow of the half an hour just before sunrise, where everything was muted and just a little bit beautiful. There was a fragrance that reminded him of pretty, giggling rich girls shopping with their chaperones in the markets and laughing at his bare feet and scabbed knees. First there was no sound, and it was strangely soothing, the absence feeling weightless. When his ears began to work once more, he still wasn’t quite sure he was hearing actual noise. There was almost nothing but the soft tinkling of flowing water and the gentle sounds of people talking in muffled voices. Will didn’t recall ever being in a place as quiet as he was then.

“Are you feeling better?”

He blinked, trying to pinpoint the direction the voice was coming from and failing. He then tried to sit up and someone gently pushed him back down at the very first twitch of his facial muscles into a wince. The inside of his mouth still tasted like blood, as if he’d licked a blade for the fun of it and everything was liquid warmth and metal. He became gradually aware that there was something wrapped around his head. The idea of a restraint of any kind pumped a sharp source of panic through him and he tore at the cloth until hands softer and smaller than his took a hold of his fingers and squeezed.

“My name is Alhena Bolour, you’re hurt but you’re safe now.”

His words came in spurts and Will struggled around the syllables, “Al...ahna...Bloo...our?”

She laughed and brushed a hand over his forehead, “Close enough.”

“Wh...ere...am—“

“In the Sassanid Palace,” she said quickly, “Vizier Qal-Fawjd was generous enough to offer us one of the unused domestic quarters.”

Even in his state, Will heard the unspoken words. Well, this room would be empty, given that the palace was in-between consorts at the current time.

“I’ve given you some opium, to dull the pain, that might be why you feel everything is quite difficult right now, but the effects should wear off in a bit,” she continued. “Though I don’t suppose being unwell for tonight would necessarily be a tragedy.”

The next thing Will knew, he was propped up against several cushions and wearing nothing more than an almost translucent white shift. Someone had bathed him, and brushed the tangles out of his hair. There was a fresh dressing around his head and a goblet of water at his hand. He had only a moment to look at the extravagance of holding water in a ruby encrusted cup before he was so overcome with the taste of the liquid that all other thought was chased from his mind. It seemed that even the water in the palace tasted better than anything in the city.

After drinking, and staring his fill at the decor; the soaring gilded ceiling that resembled the night sky, the walls covered in frescoes and plaster work painted gold and white, the bowed archways which words engraved above them – Will had time to test the extent of his injuries. Other than some bruises and the cuts on the inside of his cheek, he was fine. He’d had worse simply by walking carelessly across the Main Road and yet here they were, pampering him like he was a princess.

“Ah, you’re awake,” Jack walked in, “Finally.”

He was more imposing than Will remembered - his voice deeper.

“I’d apologise for the guards bashing your head against the wall but then I’d expect you to apologise for baiting them and we both know that won’t happen, so let’s skip the pleasantries.” He sat down at the edge of the soft mattress and crossed sandaled ankles.

Will rubbed at his forehead and did a poor job of hiding behind his palm. When he finally looked up, Jack continued as if there hadn’t been a minute-long pause.

“Do you know why I failed your screening?”

He shook his head.

“I asked you a question about,” the Vizier sighed heavily, “what you would do if you and the Emperor ever had a disagreement. Do you remember your answer?”

Another shake.

“You said, ‘is having a disagreement a euphemism for rape’?”

“I did?”

“Mhmm...and I said ‘why do you say that?’ and you looked right through me and said if you ‘disagreed’ to bending over and taking it like a whore, the best thing you could do was hold onto your head and hope it didn’t fall off.”

“Seems imminently practical.”

Jack barked a laugh, “Too much spirit, I thought. The Emperor wouldn’t appreciate it, I thought.”

“So what’s changed, the Emperor or your judgement?”

The Vizier observed him for a moment, eyes trailing over Will’s body in a way that was both remarkably cold and incredibly intrusive. He managed not to squirm, only balling his hands and sucking on the inside of his bottom lip, focusing on the sound of the fountains just outside the chambers.

“Are you done?” he squeezed out between gritted teeth when he couldn’t stand the scrutiny any longer.

“Almost,” he said softly, “The priests will come to inspect you.”

Will took a moment to choke on his tongue, “You’re really putting me up for Selection?”

Jack stood, smoothing out his tunic, “It’s taken me three years but I finally realised that the Emperor didn’t want a consort who would obey his every command and please him until he purred.”

“Oh?”

With one final sombre grunt, he nodded and turned from the room, throwing over his shoulder the ominous words, “Try to be interesting for him.”

Before Will had enough time to ponder the consequences of the statement, three men swathed in white cloth swarmed in. They had some sort of gauze over their face, obscuring eyes, nose and mouth. There were thin gloves on their hands and white sandals on their feet. The only part of their body uncovered were their toes, which peeked out from beneath long robes that brushed the floor. It was more than a little unnerving, not knowing exactly where they were looking and Will only guessed they were male from their size and build. Or what little he could determine under the layers of flowing fabric.

“Are you the priests?”

He heard the quaver in his own voice as one gestured for him to stand. As he did, the world swam, muscles in his stomach clenching in an effort to keep down his breakfast. Was it really that same morning he’d gone east as usual, fishing, selling, and going about his business without a care in the world beside how he was going to feed himself that day?

The men took a hold of his arms and lifted them so they were spread out to the sides, as if he was balancing upon a thin beam. They inspected his palms, turning his wrists, looking at the calluses on his fingers and the scars that ran down his knuckles - the echoes of fights from days gone by, the telltale sign of a man who’d taken the hard road every step of the way. They looked at his fingernails, gnawed unevenly. At least he’d been washed, and there was no longer fish blood in his cuticles. Gloved hands moved up his forearms, poked at the inside of his elbow and measured the girth of his biceps.

They smoothed palms over his shoulders, lingering on an ugly scar just under his collarbone from a knife fight that had nearly cost him his life. He could feel the disapproval through their veils. When they finished with taking the pulse at his neck, observing the convulsive up-down swallow of his Adam’s apple and peered at his eyes, he was silently asked to remove the shift.

Will breathed deeply through his nose and reminded himself he wasn’t shy about these things. It was futile to waste effort on caring about nudity when there were more pressing problems in day-to-day living. Still, the idea of people assessing him was new and distinctly unpleasant. But he simply closed his eyes and tried not to dwell.

He felt them measure his chest, touch both nipples to test their sensitivity, and pinch at the minimal fat at his waist. Fingers slid down the curve of his spine and gripped both hips. Another set of hands efficiently cupped his balls, then squeezed him until he winced. Will almost wanted to ask them whether they were trying to see if it was real or not, because _really_ , but he bit his tongue and tried not to shiver at the feeling of a gloved hand moving between the part of his cheeks and pressing at his hole. At least he could understand the need to determine whether or not he was a virgin. Though he supposed that ideal was more important in women.

Then they moved down his thighs and his calves, with one of the priests brushing at his leg hair in a way that made Will incredibly self conscious. And finally, they picked up one foot at a time and inspected his soles. He doubted what they found would please them. A lifetime of walking barefoot was sure to leave its mark. Shoes weren’t a luxury that he ever really understood, not unless one planned to walk on hot coals.

Then through some unspoken agreement, the men stepped back into a straight line and filed out of the room.

Will slowly opened his eyes and stood frozen; almost hoping the negative vibes he’d gotten from the priests would mean he wasn’t cleared for Selection. He only became aware he was trembling when his knees physically knocked together.

“Good evening.”

“Er...”

He fumbled for the shift, got tangled in its bits and pieces and struggled to pull what little cover it provided over him. The man waved a hand and stepped all the way into the room.

“Never mind that, I’ve seen it all. Sit.”

Will returned to the bed, sneakily wiping his sweaty palmy on the sheets.

The man, a Vizier it seemed, was adorned in red with lavish gold embroidery. It made Jack’s modest garb seem shameful in comparison. A bright golden brooch shone at his throat. Catching the direction of Will’s gaze, thin fingers came up to grip the accessory and pursed lips spread in a wide smile.

“My name is Frejeriqih ibn Berenjena ibn Chivo Alā-Shihltn, Grand Vizier, vezir-i âzam, absolute attorney and holder of the state to His Imperial Highness the Emperor Lekktr, Great Shahryar and King of All Kings."

The little man tugged at the stag head brooch and almost shook with smugness. Will was certain his introduction and titles were supposed to make an impression but all he could think was, “Do you actually go around calling yourself that?”

Grand Vizier Shih...Zhil...Chil...tn...tun...Chiltn...bristled, “Rude!”

Will shrugged, feeling the temperature in the room return to comfortable, “I guess I just haven’t had the education of a ‘state holder’, sir.”

“It’s ‘holder of the state’, and that’s Your Highness, to you.”

“Your highness?” he raised a brow, “really?”

“Yes, really!” the man seemed to find it difficult to shut his mouth. “I can see why Qal-Fawjd failed you.”

“Are you going to fail me too?” he said, maybe sounding too hopeful for the Grand Vizier narrowed his eyes and muttered, “If only...if only...”

“You know,” Grand Vizier Chiltn said at a normal volume, “Qal-Fawjd asked me to suggest you to the Emperor personally.”

Will shrugged, “so?”

“Do you have any idea how Selection works, pup?” the man sneered and tossed his head, “There are five possible candidates put before the Emperor. He inspects them, etcetera. Then he convenes with the Viziers and asks our opinion. I, the highest Vizier of all the High Viziers, offer my suggestion of which candidate he should choose on behalf of the congregation.”

“Okay...”

“In thirty-six Selections, I have suggested thirty-six consorts and the Emperor has taken my advice all thirty-six of those times,” the man finished off with a flourish of his arms.

With a smirk, Will crossed his over his chest and said bluntly, “And all thirty-six of them are very, very dead.”

The man scowled, “I don’t like your tone.”

The fishmonger only smiled wider. “I make it a rule not to be polite to executioners.”

“Are you implying—“

“Oh, I think it’s a little more than an implication.”

“You little—“

“Funny, that’s exactly what the guards outside said before they beat me up. Must be great to know you’re the intellectual equal of a dumb soldier.”

The Grand Vizier’s eyes widened comically, nostrils flaring, cheeks rising in colour. After several long, infinitely enjoyable moments for Will, the man took a deep breath, closed his eyes briefly and forced out a very strained smile.

“You are a brave man, Wlym.”

“It’s not like I have anything to lose.”

He exposed a smile, full of teeth. “Oh of course, only your life, I suppose.” He was at the doorway before he turned very deliberately around and said, “You may have heard the Emperor beheads his consorts when they begin to bore him. I must warn you, that’s not, strictly speaking, the precise truth.”

Then he was gone, taking his spicy perfume and dark eyes with him, leaving Will feeling very much like a piece of worm, just floating in the water and waiting for the big fish to bite.

*

They assembled in one of the courtyards. Or at least what Will presumed was only one of many. It was well into evening and quite chilly. Each of the five possible consorts had been placed along a portico, each standing beneath an arch. He’d been surprised when he’d seen the woman who’d nursed him on the far end of the walkway. He’d just assumed it had been one of the palace physicians, though after some thought, he should have guessed he wasn’t important enough to warrant Imperial aide.

As they stood there, shivering, Will took the opportunity to look askance at her profile. She had dark hair, free and flowing, fair skin, a soft chin, a long neck, slender arms and a petite frame. Going from the texture of her hands, he guessed she wasn’t a working woman. That combined with her accent which was less guttural than his own, and the simple fact that she had a last name, meant she came from a family that was of some significance.

She seemed to sense his eyes and turned her head to look down the row of candidates. Will flicked his gaze forward, keeping his expression bland. If he got out of this alive, which seemed unlikely given Grand Vizier Chiltn’s promise to suggest him to the Emperor, he hoped he could thank Alahna Bloour in person. Maybe have a conversation where he was fully conscious. Wouldn’t that be a treat?

“Consorts!” Jack marched into view and Will felt his back automatically straighten. “When the Emperor comes to see you, you will keep your eyes planted firmly on the ground, understood? Nod!”

They nodded.

“You will speak only when spoken to,” he paced, up and down their row, boots ringing on the marble tiles. “Understood? Nod!”

They nodded.

“And anything you say must be truthful, succinct and above all, with the utmost respect. Understood?”

They nodded before he’d even barked the command.

Suddenly his footsteps were retreating and the sounds of many men in wooden sandals echoed. Will saw their shadows on the ground, felt the whisper of their robes pass by him. They seemed to be parading by each consort. He sensed a good half dozen, maybe more. The back of his bared neck itched. He longed to scratch it but settled for squeezing his toes together and trying not to peek.

“We will start to the left, if you will, Your Highness,” came the oily voice of Chiltn. Will felt them move to his right, and knew they were standing in front of Alahna. “This is Alhena Bolour, her father is Viceroy Amal of the Achemid region. She is twenty-three years of age, unflowered, sixteen cabdas tall and weighs approximately 200 awqiyyahs. She is proficient in three other languages besides Sassanean and takes an interest in healing.”

Will waited for the questioning but apparently, whatever the Emperor saw either pleased him so much or so little that he simply moved on. Next thing he knew, the Grand Vizier was introducing another woman, “Bifawya Katz, born in the Belagines quarter of the capital. She is twenty years of age, unflowered, seventeen cabdas tall and weighs approximately 220 awqiyyahs. She plays the violin.”

Again, he waited for the questions, but again, the Emperor was without comment and they moved swiftly onwards.

“This is Yakub Brisiqir, of the Sabkha Family Brisiqir. He is twenty years of age, eighteen cabdas tall and weighs approximately 340 awqiyyahs. He is trained in the art of apothecary and was a large contributor to the aesthetic design of the Imperial Aqueduct. He is proficient in mathematics.”

The Emperor seemed to mutter something under his breath but without any further conversation, they moved on.

“This is Briin Zellr of the Flojera quarter of the capital. He is from a wealthy merchant family dealing in precious jewels and can speak both Pāli and Celtiberian. He is nineteen years of age, eighteen cabdas tall and weighs approximately 320 awqiyyahs. His is an avid open sea swimmer.”

Finally they were standing before Will, whose neck was aching with tension, the strain of hanging his head aggravating his injuries. His feet had gone numb and his fingers stiff with trying not to clench them. The inside of his mouth was so dry he could have sprung a desert from it. A throng of Viziers brought with them the cloying scent of rose flower oil, spicy amber and heady teakwood. Less confused than that mix of smells and temptations at the monthly bazaar, more subtle and teasing. A deep throbbing inside his skull settled into the rhythm of his rapid heartbeat.

“This is Wlym. He is a trader, twenty-four years of age, eighteen cabdas tall and weighs approximately 280 awqiyyahs,” Will heard the hesitation in the Grand Vizier’s voice as he attempted to think of something else to fill his sparse description. It wasn’t exactly a stunning testimony to say he came from the slums and ‘trader’ was incredibly generous as it was.

“He is a very well built young man,” Chiltn finished, sounding sheepish even to Will’s ringing ears.

There was silence and he thought the Emperor must be making a face, probably ready to turn away at any minute and pick another consort.

“What is your family name?”

He was so shocked at the sound of the voice that Will made the mistake of looking up, just to be sure. As soon as he did so, he was arrested by the sight of the Emperor, closer than he’d seemed. A square face, strong jaw line, younger than he’d expected but more weathered too. He was clothed in simple blue cloth, dyed a vibrant shade but lacking any of the ornamentation of Chiltn’s. It fell elegantly down his shoulders, making him seem a great deal taller than he was, all straight lines and trim figure. Jack cleared his throat and Will abruptly shut his hanging jaw. He blinked. And blinked again, in case.

The crowd of men, looking down their noses at him (and for one rather stout fellow, up his nose), waited expectantly.

“...What?”

“The Emperor asked you a question,” Chiltn said imperiously, and he could practically hear the man biting down on his tongue to stop himself from addressing Will as ‘pup’.

“...What was the question again?”

It might have been his imagination but he thought he could see a flicker of emotion cross the Emperor’s stoic facade. Surprise, maybe. Or a deep amusement.

“His Highness asked what your family name was.”

Will stared, looked to Jack for support and eventually clarified, “I don’t have one.”

Chiltn squirmed. The Emperor looked around at his advisors and said in a voice that was at once soft and dangerous, “You have sent me a peasant.”

It wasn’t a question.

The Viziers were struck dumb and began throwing surreptitious looks at the guilty Vizier Qal-Fawjd. When the Emperor levelled Jack a look, he only bowed his head and said, “I thought he would please you. If my reasoning was flawed, I can only beg His Highness’ forgiveness.”

Somehow to Will, who looked back and forth between the two men, Jack sounded less apologetic than he did stubborn. When the Emperor caught him staring, he quickly looked away, focusing instead of his own knees.

“You are from the city?”

“Yes.”

There was a long pause, so long that Will looked up again, flushing at steely expression on the Emperor’s face and added a hasty, “Your Highness.”

After another second trapped under that gaze, the Emperor and his cohort moved away, disappearing into one of the room branching out from the courtyard. Will started to breathe again. He felt hot all over, and deeply ashamed. He’d never given any thought to being ashamed of what he’d been born into. What was the point, really, when there was nothing he could do about it. Ambition was a completely ridiculous idea. Why have dreams or aspirations when you knew you would just fail?

Well, he thought moodily, at least there was no chance the Emperor would choose him. It was a blow to his pride, but good news if he wanted to continue to live. Yes, he did. Very much so. And he certainly hadn’t been looking forward to bedding the Emperor. Had he? Of course not. He didn’t really give it any thought, sex. He certainly hadn’t thought of the Emperor, stripped, lying back upon cushions of royal purple and luscious pinks and watching the consorts perform. He hadn’t thought about whether the Emperor took them face down, rutting into them from behind, a faceless cavity of heat and tightness. Or whether he preferred for them to go down on him, looking up with lust filled eyes. Whether he wanted them begging. Or whether he took them rough, before they were prepared. Whether he found pleasure in knowing he would kill them so soon after he’d touched them, tainted them. Whether he liked to beat the flesh, maybe he liked to bite, maybe he got hard at the thought of blood and sweat and limbs.

Will cleared his throat, blinking a layer of film from where his vision had clouded over. He knew he was red all down his neck and chest, and that the shift hid next to nothing. What he didn’t know was why he was even thinking these thoughts. It wasn’t healthy. For his body or his mind.

“His Highness has come to a decision,” Chiltn’s voice drifted into Will’s consciousness and he instinctively lifted his head before realising the other candidates still had theirs bowed. Before he could lower his gaze, he realised the Emperor was looking straight at him. At their distance he couldn’t be sure whether it was his own projection, but Will could swear he sensed a kind of fevered heat in the man’s stare.

Oh. He was beyond conflicted. He didn’t _want_ to be chosen. Definitely not. But there was something intrinsically alluringly about being wanted. And he felt wanted. Felt desired. By the Emperor no less. No, he was definitely projecting...definitely. Absolutely.

Then the Emperor bit his bottom lip and Will forgot how to breathe. Definitely desire.

“The new Imperial Consort will be,” Chiltn paused for dramatic effort.

Will was far too busy trying not to drown in the expression in the Emperor’s eyes.

“Alhena Bolour.”

_What?_

He looked at Alahna, who’d flushed and stepped forward, taking the Grand Viziers hand. The Viziers formed a line, Chiltn and Alahna at the front. They walked straight by Will. He could practically fill her fear vibrating off her in waves. The skin around her nose had gone blotchy. She was trying hard not to cry. Then she was gone and Jack clapped a hand on his shoulder as he passed, looking solemn and extremely disappointed. It had all happened so quickly.

It wasn’t until the Emperor was right in front of him that he thought to look up. The other consorts, expressions of relief shining on their features, stared.

“You seem unhappy, why is that?”

Will tried not to gape at being addressed directly, again. “She’s frightened out of her wits...um, Your Highness.”

“Because I will kill her,” the Emperor noted in the same way he might have commented on the heat of the day.

The nonchalance angered Will and suddenly he set his shoulders and balled his hands into fists. Alahna was a kind, generous woman, who deserved more than this heartless creature. Emperor or no, it simply wasn’t right to speak of human life like it was worthless. If there was one thing he’d learnt growing up in a world that was less than fair, it was just how valuable and fleeting life was.

“I’m unhappy because she deserved better.”

The Emperor arched an eyebrow. Will was distantly aware that everyone was watching him with bated breath. “Better than the Emperor?”

“Better than a madman.”

“You think I’m mad?”

“You enjoy killing.”

The Emperor seemed to contemplate this, “I would certainly enjoy killing _you_.”

Will could feel his heartbeat jumping in his neck. He lifted his chin. “Then do it.”

Then, instead of ordering his beheading, the Emperor, inexplicably, broke into a wide smile. He continued on his walk, saying to the courtyard in general, “A fishmonger from the slums. Who would have thought. I think I would like to marry him too. That is allowed, yes? If not, change the rules. One consort has always bored me, perhaps, this ‘Wlym’ will make things much more interesting.”

And before he could run, two Viziers took him by the arms, and began to lead him forward. It wasn’t until he was standing in the middle of a grand hall, facing the priests once more, that Will realised the scene in the courtyard may have been a test. Of what, he wasn’t sure. His rashness? His rudeness? His courage, perhaps?

Now he was a consort.

What was especially unnerving, was that he had no idea whether he’d failed, or passed.


	2. To Bed and Glory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Their crying is particularly melodic,” said the Emperor.
> 
> Ambassador Lounds swallowed, “and do your lambs generally cry?”
> 
> “If encouraged."

**24 hours ago**

“My Majesty.”

“Frejeriqih,” the Emperor said without shifting his gaze from three dancing concubines.

The Grand Vizier dropped his voice further, until it was barely audible over the lutes and harps and castanets. “I have a rather _sensitive_ matter to discuss with Your Highness, if you could just –“

“Do not command me.”

“Uh...apologies, Your Highness, but –“

“Leave.”

“But –“

The Emperor looked at him. Just looked, nothing more. The Vizier paled, tipped his head and shuffled backwards hastily, his entire body concaved forward. The three women, wrapped in transparent cloths of turquoise, fuchsia and gold, flaunted their wares. Hanniba‘al-Abégendlic of Family Lekktr ran the pad of his thumb over a satin handkerchief in his hand. There was delicate stitching in gold thread upon the square cloth. In one corner were stag antlers, the Lekktr insignia. If he threw it at the feet of a particular dancer, it would be a sign she had been favoured, and that night, she would arrive in his chambers dressed to be undressed.

An auburn-haired slave, objectively conforming to societal standards of buxom beauty, sidled up to him. She angled at the hips, back remaining straight and eyes downcast. An ornate silver tray held a single crystal glass of watermelon juice, garnished with mint.

“I am not thirsty.”

Even without looking at her, he could feel her hesitation, could almost hear her gulping.

“I-I’m sorry, i-it’s a gift from...from the...Ambassador of Celtiberia, Your Highness.”

“I do not enjoy juice.”

The slave lingered a few moments, weigh shifting from foot to foot, then retreated to the relative safety of the shadows. Back on the floor, the fuchsia dancer was doing something truly ridiculous with her hips. The Emperor squeezed the handkerchief, glancing at the other two in complete boredom. _The third flutist had no sense of rhythm_. Who organised tonight’s festivities? He would punish them for their sloppiness. Rather than endure the gyrating in front of him, he glanced around the hall, amusing himself with observing the mindless masses.

The Viceroy of Agrabah, bandaged from head to toe in white marocain, was lusting heavily after the dancer in turquoise. His wife was lusting after her too.

The lutist second from the left would be violently sick in less than twenty minutes, she was, unbeknownst to anyone including herself, eight weeks pregnant.

High Vizier Qal-Fawjd was functioning on less than four hours sleep per night, a consequence of his growing gambling debt and concern for the longevity of the current Imperial Consort.

Speaking of which, the Emperor honed in on his adoring wife. She, dark eyes fluttering shamelessly at one of the Celtiberian guards, was leaning against one of the tiled columns, a cup of yoghurt doogh in her bejewelled fingers. He could see the oval-cut ruby on her fourth finger, the modest pearl on her third; gifts from High Vizier Shihltn and the palace cook respectively.

There was a sudden change in the tempo of the music. It slowed. Brass bells hanging off a knotted rope and a shabbabeh reed pipe joined the melody. Miss Fuchsia swanned towards him, her eyes lined with kohl and cheeks rouged. Looking up at him through a thick curtain of lashes, she didn’t even attempt subtlety when her glance fell very obviously on the handkerchief.

He rolled his eyes and waved at her.

Immediately, two men with scimitars at their hips stepped forward. A hush settled over the scene. The other two dancers and the musicians stopped with a discordant clang. The Emperor winced.

“The flutist too,” he said, not much louder than usual.

“What, I –“

He levelled a silencing look. The man instantly went as limp as a doll.

“My Majesty, is this wise?” the Grand Vizier stepped forward again.

The Emperor stood. Instantly, the entire congregation bowed. It was like watching a sea of very colourful dolls knocked over by a child’s boot.

Slowly, each movement a shimmer of olive silk, he stepped off the dais, onto the dance space, until he was staring down at the petrified dancer. She dropped to her knees when he drew even, hands reaching for the bottom of his robes.

“No.”

The hands drew back. Her head was practically pressed to the floor.

That was when he grinned.

The handkerchief fell from his fingers to land at his feet. She gasped audibly and was about to blubber something sentimentally relieved but he cut her short, clicking fingers at the two swords and pointing at the sentenced musician.

As they dragged him away, his sobs falling into a gasping synchronicity his playing did not, the Emperor looked back down at the dancer. Her bare back glistened under a layer of jasmine oil.

“Tonight.”

She nodded, nose still brushing the floor.

In the back corner, someone slipped out of the hall. In the otherwise silent room, the click of the wooden panel sliding shut was as obvious as if his wife had simply announced her exit to the audience. Over near the marble reliefs, a woman who’d taken a bite of pomegranate just before he’d stood, was letting the juice run through her fingers and drip onto the floor. He strode over, until her tightly wound red curls were all he could see.

“Ambassador.”

Slowly, she raised her head. A set of very fine cheekbones and even sharper blue eyes met his. Lifting the squeezed fruit to her mouth, she took another large bite. Liquid rolled down the valleys of her knuckles and followed the corner of her lips. He could hear her chew.

“Hanniba’al Lekktr.”

He narrowed his eyes infinitesimally.

She grinned, lips still glistening, “I’m not one for ceremony.”

“Maybe you should have informed my palace before we threw you such a generous welcome.”

A ringing laugh, “well, where’s the fun in that?”

The Emperor quirked an eyebrow.

Blue eyes glanced around, “don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy showing off?”

“I am certain my court did.”

“Not you?”

“We share that habit for simplicity in common, Miss Lounds.”

“Must be a difficult habit to maintain, being king and all.”

“Kings are not synonymous with emperors,” he said after a sustained stare. “And I am not synonymous with anyone.”

She grimaced, “are you saying you’re completely unique? That’s quite a statement, Mr Lekktr.”

“You have no idea,” the Emperor smiled. After a second, so did the Ambassador.

*

Later that evening, the Ambassador retired to the lavish guest chambers in the Eastern Wing. She slept soundly, woke in the morning and found herself pleasingly alive and unmutilated in any way shape and form. The Emperor met her in one of the vast arrays of ceremonial halls. But there was a heaviness in the air she couldn’t quite place and so she stepped up to him, skipped the bowing, and piped, “what happened last night, after you locked me up in the farthest part of your castle?”

“Your quarters displeased you?”

“There’s something going on. What is it?”

“My people may be less communicative this morning, they have a feast to prepare.”

“A feast? And why would that turn your servants into skittish horses, sir?”

“Exhaustion takes its toll,” the Emperor said smoothly, “a particularly sizeable pig was slaughtered yesterday evening. The court spent the entire night salting and tenderizing the meat.”

The Ambassador stared, she could smell oud on the Emperor, a particularly pungent incense to mask odours. There was a light red mark just inside the collar of the burgundy robe, as if a fingernail had been scraped across it.

“Feasts in this palace often contain up to 1000 dishes,” the man continued seamlessly, as if he didn’t notice the woman collecting data and growing progressively paler, “meat must be fresh or else the palate suffers for it.”

“Of course,” she mumbled, unable to look away from the dangerous smile upon his face.

“You should excuse a slight lethargy this morning, Miss Lounds, I do demand perfection in such things. Imperfection is, as you expect, treated accordingly. I believe they are treating several young lambs in the kitchens, one who thought himself of a musical disposition.”

“Can lambs be musical?” The horror stole upon her like a shadow.

“Their crying is particularly melodic.”

Ambassador Lounds swallowed, “and do your lambs generally cry?”

“If encouraged.” The Emperor wore an expression of supreme serenity. “The lamb Khoresht-e-mast is a particular local specialty, tonight you must try it. Now, if you would excuse me.”

The Ambassador stood in the hall, cold. Dawn stole through the bowed arches, the scalloping on the plaster bending the rays and patterning the ground with a display similar to that of a forest floor; light filtering through leaves. Around her, walls of purple and cream rose upwards towards an elliptical ceiling covered in brushstrokes of Sassanean script in gold ink, the words winding around each other until it seemed like a moving, slithering thing with a personality of its own.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she agreed, wooden.

“Are you alright?” High Vizier Qal-Fawjd asked in concern.

Miss Freddie Lounds swivelled until she faced the unknown Vizier, “I would like an audience with the Queen.”

“The Imperial Consort?” his brow furrowed, “you haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?” she challenged.

The Vizier pursed his lips and looked away. Eventually he replied, “what’s your business here, Ambassador?”

She bit her tongue and thought through several responses. Finally settling on, “to investigate rumours.”

Qal-Fawjd looked askance at her, “I’ll save you the trouble of investigation by saying they’re all true.”

“Oh,” Freddie wet parched lips, “I see.”

The Vizier turned to her and frowned, “do you?”

Looking at an abruptly brutal visage, full of anger and terror, she said with great solemnity, “the Emperor mentioned he enjoys fine cuisine.”

“Mhmm.”

“What’s required?” At the Vizier’s stern, enquiring look, she clarified, “What’s required for a particularly good dish?”

The room spun as the Vizier replied, “rudeness.”

*

**Present**

Jack was speaking but the words were like wind. It was far too difficult trying to understand what other people were feeling and thinking when he could barely sort out the roiling in his own gut. Will could tell Alahna, who was being spoken to by another Vizier with a long grey beard, was reliving the moment in the courtyard over and over. Strangely, he was in an entirely different place. 

In the recollection, he might have been six, maybe younger. There was an injured dog and it was particularly shocking because, until then, his child’s brain hadn’t been able to register that other living things beside humans also felt pain. In his memory, Will couldn’t remember what the affliction had actually been, only the sound of the thing alternating between pitiful whines and furious snarls.

_“Is it diseased?”_

_“You mean, is the meat safe to eat...?”_

It was suddenly so clear, that smell of rotting flesh. The dog was immobile, lying on his side, flies and maggots already beginning to feast. Young Will had watched as someone stepped forward and tried to help the dog. He’d watched as the beast erupted into a series of terrified yaps and warning growls; all teeth, all drool. After that, no one tried to go near it.

When it died, Zaza, the butcher’s wife, had skinned the body and made gruel. Will was almost certain that’s what his mother had fed him that evening. He remembered asking her why the dog hadn’t wanted the help, even when it had desperately needed it. She’d ruffled his hair and gone to attend his brothers and sisters, saying that he’d understand when he was older.

“Have you heard anything I’ve said?”

Will blinked slowly.

Jack rolled his eyes and scowled. He grabbed him by the shift and pulled him in close. Will felt his body move as if tugged by strings. “Listen, kid, if you want to survive, I suggest you start taking advice and heeding warnings.”

The Vizier waited expectantly for a response. Will blinked deliberately and said in a lazy voice, “do you think he’ll kill me, or her, first?”

He was sure he’d never been shaken so hard in his life.

“Okay, let me go, crazy,” Will spat out, pushing the Vizier’s hands off his upper arms.

“Oh, _I’m_ crazy?” Jack hissed, glancing around as if he didn’t know every breath echoed in the architecture of the hall. “Have you no sense of self preservation, boy?”

He tried to think of a way to explain the sheer hopelessness that threatened to drag him down and down, until he hit the ocean floor in a puff of dirt and sand. How on earth was he supposed to put on a brave face and smile at the wedding when every word the High Priestess would speak would sound like his last rites? Thirty-six had gone before him and all thirty-six had come out in pieces. How could any man be expected to endure in the face of such history? He might not be a mathematician, or a philosopher, or an engineer, or any learned folk with a proper education and all that nonsense – but he had common sense by the fish buckets and he knew a lost cause when he saw one.

“The Emperor hates me,” he finally muttered. “You told me to be interesting and somehow I thought that meant rude and challenging.”

“Maybe he likes rude?”

Will widened his eyes, “are you actually _humouring_ me High Vizier Qal-Fawjd? Oh God, I’m doomed.”

“Chin up, kid, all’s not lost,” Jack looked around again, a distinctly guilty look on his face. “You didn’t hear what was said after he’d viewed all the Candidates.”

The fishmonger lifted a corner of his mouth, “’Dammit, I liked the last lot better?’”

“Will you be serious, for once?”

“Why?” he shrugged, “I was being serious at Selection and look where that got me.”

“Imperial Consort of the Emperor of the Šeherzada Kingdom.”

“Which is really just a fancy way of saying ‘chopping block’.”

Jack looked completely put out but his licked his lips and, with another long suffering sigh, tried again. “The Emperor doesn’t want meek and mild anymore. When he conversed with the Viziers, he asked after your injuries. We told him the circumstances, and how Alhena Bolour had volunteered to treat you. Then he decided to marry you both. It means something, Will. Don’t be fatalistic! You two are different, and that’s exactly what the Emperor wants. If you just made an effort, instead of throwing yourself into the fire before you’ve even met the dragon, then maybe you could change the world.”

Before Will could say something about melodrama, the Vizier bent his knees, put them eye to eye and spoke gravely, “You would be saving lives.” Jack squeezed his shoulders and shook him a little, “I can see an end to this horror.”

There was a creak, and the large wooden door with gold gilding swung open. Six priests filed in, heads bowed and hands clasped behind their backs. Across the hall, Alahna shot him a look of incomprehensible dread. The Vizier standing by her bounced on his toes and appeared to be humming. Jack put a finger under Will’s chin and refocused his attention.

“Thirty-six deaths and who knows how many more,” he paused and gripped his chin a little tighter, “and you can stop it.”

They stared at each other (or more accurately, Will stared at the pores on Jack’s nose). He knew the Vizier expected him to comment, to say something insightfully profound or give a determined nod of his head and fist his fingers as if enraptured by his newfound purpose. But all Will could see was the dying dog and he finally understood. _Let me take responsibility for my life I have failed to protect._

“I can’t.”

“Will!”

“He’s not ready,” he pulled out of Jack’s lax grip and turned to face the priests.

The Vizier hurried to do the same. “Who’s not ready?” he muttered out the side of his mouth.

Three priests moved towards Alahna and three towards them. Will inhaled through his nose and held the breath for as long as he could. Then, summoning a crooked smile from somewhere, he glanced at Jack and quipped, “Emperor Lekktr. I mean, he obviously has a commitment problem.”

Jack opened his mouth. But the priests were leading him away. Shrugging one shoulder, he called back, “I just don’t think relationships are his area!”

An hour later, and scrubbed within an inch of his life, feeling like a scaled fish, Will stepped, quite naked, into a sparse chamber. Darkness blanketed the city. Upon the walls were empty torch brackets and there were candles scattered upon every surface. He’d never been able to afford wax. So to see a good half dozen all lit up at once seemed such a waste. Will moved around the room, blowing out all but one. With most of the artificial light extinguished, he realised there were windows cut into the room, very high up. Through them, moonlight shone through. The pale light cast a deathly sheen over the scene and he wrapped a towel tighter around his middle. Damp water soaked into a body unused to showers let alone baths. It made him shake with unforseen violence. He felt unbearably clean.

A woman walked into his chamber and, bizarrely, curtsied. She was dressed in a pale green dress of great splendour. Jewels dripped from her ears and neck. In silence, she walked across the room, head still bowed, and opened the doors of what he’d assumed was an empty wardrobe. Returning to a spot in front of him, she curtsied again and placed the robes in her arms over the back of a chair, then walked out.

Will tried to make sense of the scene, and failed.

Before he could call her back and, at the very least, thank her, a man appeared at his door. He was dressed in a simple cream coloured tunic and light jerkin of some thinly woven fabric. But the plain clothes didn’t make Will feel any better when he bowed and went to the seat, smoothing out the layers the woman had laid out. Because silence held its own form of protection, he didn’t say anything as the man separated the layers. He didn’t even say anything when the man gestured for Will to remove him towel. It was when the man picked up a loin cloth-like contraption and made to physically put it on him, that he snapped.

“Stop,” he took a step back and yanked at the towel until it was firmly back around his waist. “Can I at least know your name?”

The man bowed again, “Gidyun, Your Highness.”

He couldn’t help it. The moniker was just _wrong_. Hysterical giggles dribbled from his mouth and soon he was bent over, hoping that in the midst of the laughter, his stomach would fall out and it would stop trying to burn a hole through his intestines. Through it all, the man remained expressionless.

Wiping tears away, Will corrected, “Call me Will, really. And, er...what are you doing?”

“Serving you, Your—“

“Will.”

“Your Highness Will.”

“...Right. Serving me, how?”

“I am your manservant, Your Highness Will. It is my role to dress you for the wedding, Your Highness Will.”

“Okay, that’s enough. I’m not going to call you ‘Gidyun’ at the end of every sentence,” Will heard the edge of command in his own voice and inwardly cringed. With a slightly gentler tone, he asked, “who was the woman?”

“She is Maryam, your handmaiden. A gift from Vizier Qal-Fawjd.”

“She was dressed like a princess.”

Gidyun raised his head enough to give him an odd look.

“What?”

“Begging your pardon, Your Highness Will, but Maryam is a slave of the Emperor’s household.”

Will tried not to swallow his tongue. “I don’t want a slave.”

The manservant lifted his head entirely and seemed to survey Will a long time. He was pretty certain this was forbidden behaviour but it made him fill much less like his arms and legs didn’t belong with his body. Gidyun frowned, the tone of his voice rising from its silky obedience into something with just a little more bite to it.

“There are only slaves here.”

“Are you a slave?”

“Yes.”

“Do you resent it?” Will narrowed his eyes.

Gidyun seemed to be deep in thought. “Apparently, not ask much as Your Highness Will resents his new enslavement.”

Then the man bowed deeply, though it seemed more mocking than respectful. Instead of feeling insulted, because a few hours inside the palace hadn’t managed to give him that much of a sense of self entitlement yet, Will grinned. It was as if a ceremonial veil had shifted slightly in the breeze and he’d gotten a glimpse at the saccharine sweet smile beneath. There was something inherently alluring and incredibly toxic about that taste of danger. He supposed the court of a serial widower couldn’t be quite as tame as it had seemed.

“I’ll dress myself,” Will said, fumbling with the pieces of his outfit. “You can go.”

Gidyun straightened his spine, looked him square in the eyes, a blatant challenge, and then simpered, “very good, Your Highness Will.”

*

“What’s this?” Will asked, spooning a sort of stew into his mouth.

Alahna took a bite of a sweet covered in nuts. “That’s Khoresht-e-mast, it’s a pudding with, see here,” she pointed to flecks of yellow and orange, “saffron and boiled orange peel to bring out the sweetness, and lots of yoghurt.”

“It’s strange,” he rolled a mouthful of savoury meat bathed in sugar.

“It’s popular at weddings,” she gestured at his cup, “that’s doogh, it’s yoghurt too.”

Will threw her a look, “yeah, I do live in this kingdom, you know.”

She laughed, painted lips opening in a flash of glee, “sorry, fishmonger. You were just so surprised at seeing zereshk that I couldn’t be sure.”

“It was surprising!”

“It was rice!”

They laughed. Will reached for what seemed like a block of stone.

“That’s halvā, made with a tahini paste.”

Man-handling a knife and wondering how he was supposed to eat the thing, he used the tip of the utensil to point of the many green flakes that seemed embedded in the ‘halva’, whatever that was.

“Pistachios.”

“Right.”

“Oh, Will, you’re too cute.”

“Just what every man wants to hear.”

They looked at each other, the sounds of the feast falling away. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d really been with a woman and thought that there might be something extra there. Alahna broke the gaze first, a slight blush adorning her cheeks. She went back to eating the toffee, one hand resting on the table in a closed fist. Will spent the rest of the celebration in silence, picking at his food. There were only so many moments he could steal with Alahna before people began to talk. Not that they weren’t already the centre of attention.

He wasn’t certain how much time passed, or how much he’d eaten. Most of the food seemed to pass straight through him, and he’d began to suspect that he would remain perpetually empty – a painted tortoise whose flesh had long turned to ash. One of the dancers paraded past. Her chest was nearly armoured with the amount of crystals on it. Her bare stomach pulsed in time with the music. Bare feet and belled ankles twisted, padding across a stone floor as if the cold didn’t sting. A waiter offered him yet another cup of doogh.

Will wondered what would happen that night.

“My lords and ladies, good Viziers of the High Council,” came a voice from behind them, probably at the shoulder of the Emperor, whose dais they sat beneath. “We’ve come to that part of the night when we must bid our Honourable Emperor and his wives goodnight!”

There was an almighty jeer from the crowd. Will saw a multitude of bared teeth. His heart whimpered. Alahna took his hand beneath their table. She was squeezing him so hard it hurt.

The man began to say something but suddenly he paused. They craned their necks backwards. The Emperor sat on a cushion of bright red velvet, the low table before him spread with an assortment of artfully arranged dishes. In robes of jet black and jewels of diamond and pearl, he looked much like the great Night itself. Will shivered violently.

The speaker, a very large man with a sweaty brow, straightened after hearing the Emperor’s whisper and addressed the room with spread arms of billowing forest green sleeves. “All rise for Emperor Lekktr, Shahryar and King of Kings, and _one_ of his wives, Her Highness, Imperial Consort Alhena Bolour!”

Alahna gasped, her face falling as she attempted to pull Will’s arm off. They shared one look of equal parts confusion and dismay before Grand Vizier Chiltn had offered a hand that demanded taking and she was standing up in a flurry of pale pink fabric.

“To bed and glory!” The speaker drew his sword.

“To bed and glory!” the hall echoed, so loud Will could feel his world shake. He watched Alahna take her place slightly behind the Emperor’s seat. Then the man himself rose to his feet a moment later and instead of bowing, the crowd drew their swords in a salute of steel.

“The Imperial vow!” The speaker gestured at the new couple.

The Emperor turned to face Alahna, his back to the audience. Will watched as he took her hand and placed a gentle kiss on those knuckles. He could see her shaking from several paces away. Then the Emperor leaned in and she flinched. But instead of anything untoward, he seemed to be whispering something to her.  
When he drew back, the audience roared in unison, “it is done!”

In bemusement, he watched as the Emperor descended the steps from the dais down to the second raised level, where he and Alahna had dined. His wife nearly ran into his back when he suddenly stopped. Will felt, rather than heard, the spectators take a breath in unison and hold it.

Will hastily got to his feet, heartbeat pouring out of his ears. All at once he was looking into the Emperor’s face. He gaped when the man took his left hand and lifted it to his mouth, noting in a very distracted sort of way that this was the first time they had touched. The fingers were warm, Will had expected ice. They were long too, longer than his, and firmer than it had seemed when he’d gently picked up Alahna’s delicate wrist. Will dreaded the kiss.

But the Emperor did not kiss him.

Will watched, as if back in his opium haze, the lips hovering just about his skin. He could feel the slight dampness of hot breath and struggled not to do something rash, like pull back and rub his hand violently on his thigh. The Emperor was staring, contemplating the fingers. Then those eyes flickered up. Will felt them latch onto his, felt his own widen. Felt that heat he’d thought he’d imagined in the courtyard. 

Two breaths. Five heartbeats.

Then the Emperor finally, _finally_ , closed the gap.

And bit him.

A press of moistness, and then the cool touch of teeth – before they clamped over one knuckle, _tightening_. Those eyes never even blinked.

Before Will could do so much as gasp, the Emperor straightened and bent forward. For one wild moment, he thought he was about to be devoured but instead, he felt breath at his ear, “بعد عن الشر و غنيله.” 

A gentle caress of lips over the curve of his ear. Will shuddered.

The next thing he knew, the hall was ringing with the cries of, “it is done!” and the Emperor and Alahna were walking away. He glanced back at Jack, wondering if he was supposed to follow after all, but the Vizier moved his head a fraction to the left and a feather to the right. _No._  
He watched husband and wife walk down the middle aisle, through the forest of swords, with an indescribable ache inside. He felt, foolishly, like he had been abandoned.

When the far doors shut with a resounding bang, the swords were sheathed and the hall erupted into raucous cheering. It was like a completely different place. They seemed elated the Emperor was gone.

“More food, no supervision,” the speaker said, dropping onto the silver cushion Alahna had recently vacated. He bent forward and embraced a very flustered Will. “Hi, my name’s Farānqhl’ayn. You’re a very lucky man.”

“Am I.”

“Mm,” he popped a piece of chicken kebab from Alahna’s table into his mouth and spoke around it, “de Em-pror’s da bes’,” he swallowed, “sorry, I’ve been standing back there all night. Starving,” he spooned some rice and followed it with a palm full of sour cherries, “Em-pror –‘oves fooh,” he wiped his mouth, “I love food too.”

Will smirked and accepted another cup of doogh, “I can see that.”

The speaker glanced over at him and the cheek that wasn’t bulging grinned. “An’ he ‘oves music. An’ arch,” swallowing, he corrected, “I mean, art. He’s great.” The man thought for a bit, taking a break from eating to lean across and take Will’s half-finished doogh, “Don’t know why he didn’t take you both.”

This piqued Will’s interest.

“Oh yes, he’s married two before.”

At the encouraging gestures, the man continued lazily, “He took them both to his chambers the first night. So much scandal, you wouldn’t believe it. I wonder what goes on in Emperor Lekktr’s room...” he trailed off dreamily, seeming to have gone into a fantasy that Will definitely did not want to follow him into.

“So, um, what was all that,” Will waved at the dais above, “about?”

“To bed and glory? It’s custom. Haven’t you ever been to a Sassanean wedding?”

“No...no, I meant, the vows and stuff.”

The speaker seemed rather surprised. He actually stopped shifting about, sitting back and narrowing his eyes slightly. “Well, the Emperor promises his new consort something, with the guests as witnesses. And throughout the duration of the marriage, he’s isn’t allowed to break that promise.”

“But if it’s whispered,” Will said after some thought, “how does anyone know if he breaks it or not?”

The man just shrugged. “Emperor Lekktr’s a good guy,” he went back to feasting, ripping off a piece of lettuce and dipping it in rose water syrup, “he keeps ‘is prom-ses.”

At that, Will got to his feet, eager to get away from this fanatical supporter. He didn’t know how the Emperor could murder wife after perfectly acceptable wife only to keep this creature on hand.

“Sorry, Fa...Franq...sorry, sir, but I should...” he awkwardly side-stepped the man’s significant bulk.

As soon as he was free of the company, Jack appeared at his elbow, swift and silent as a cat. Though that wasn’t too much of an achievement given the state of the hall. Nothing short of a fire could disturb them. They all seemed to have forgotten one Imperial Consort was still present. Not that Will minded. It was good he no longer felt like the freak show in the cage.

“What did the Emperor say?”

“Well, you certainly get straight to it, don’t you?”

Jack gave him a stern frown, “don’t be coy, Will. It doesn’t suit.”

“Why does it matter?”

“It matters,” Jack grabbed his shoulder and started manoeuvring him towards one of the niches in the wall, “because it tells us what he thinks of you.”

Will gave a weak laugh, “you couldn’t tell from his little display?”

“What little display?”

The fishmonger stared. “You...you didn’t see?”

The Vizier glanced around, then hissed, “ _what_ little display?”

But it had seemed so obvious. At the time...it had seemed...Will flushed.

“Nothing.”

“No, it’s not nothing,” Jack urged, “what happened, Will?”

He suddenly felt suffocated. The smell of meats and sauces and desserts clogged his nose and congealed at the back of his throat. His head pounded. “I’m going to be sick.”

“Don’t be stupid – “

But Will shoved past him and stumbled into the main hall, feeling his way to a door, and fell through it, letting it bang closed behind him. He put hands on knees and heaved. Had he imagined the teeth? What if he had? What did that say about him? And why, oh why, hadn’t he chosen to spend the night to with Will? What was he doing to Alahna? Was he going to kill them both? Was he going to kill one first and make the other watch? What if he’d taken them both tonight? Would he have fucked them together? Made them fuck each other while _he’d_ watched?

Breathe.

He pressed his eyes shut and ate mouthfuls of cool air. It was better out in the hallway. Instead of returning to that spectacle, Will walked forward. The place was lit periodically by large braziers placed along the bottom of the left wall but it was by no means bright. After the glaring lights in the hall, it was a sanctuary of quiet and darkness. The pounding had begun to recede and gradually, his pulse returned to only a slightly quickened patter.

Under the dancing flames, the palace took on a surreal quality. Combined with golden highlights upon the blue coloured walls and ceilings which absorbed and reflected and distorted the light, Will felt like he was underwater. It was like ducking just beneath the surface on a bright day when the sea was still and you could see straight to the bottom. That same play of shadow, it made him feel remarkably at home, and yet sick to the core all at once. He wondered if he’d ever get to see the open water again. Whether he’d be able to smell the salt air, its breezes, the power in the waves, breaking upon the shore. Would he ever feel shoal and shell beneath his feet? Sand in his toes, or scratching at his calves in airborne little twisters whipped up by the winds?

He’d hate to be buried here, in the city. He’d like to be laid to rest somewhere free, where nature ruled without contest. Will walked and walked, ignoring the many doors that branched off the hallway, instead following it to the end – if there was an end. It was rather like being in a dream, and retracing your own steps over and over, only realising you had been passing that same patch of wall after you’d woken up. Perhaps it really was a dream, and he would wake up with the smell of piss and dog. He’d share a piece of stale bread with Abigail. He’d tell himself he’d patch up the hole in his roof that day and never end up doing it. He’d go down the Eastern Road with his little cart, then lug it back to the city to sell for a handful of silver siglois and maybe one or two gold darics if he’d had a very good morning.  
Will brushed a hand across the wall, felt the fine art, and thought that just this part of the hallway could feed his whole neighbourhood for a year. He could steal that brazier right there and it would keep everyone at home warm all through the winter months. The family of seven who shared his mud hut would probably invite everyone in the area. They’d all crowd into the one room, snuggle down with the dogs, go to sleep in piles of rugs and mats and half-empty bellies.

He shook the idea from his head. It was time to acknowledge he would never be seeing any of them again. Not if the Emperor planned to uphold his vow. _بعد عن الشر و غنيله._ Or more accurately, expected Will to uphold it. Because it really wasn’t a promise that the Emperor needed to keep – it was more something that Will need to agree to, or submit to, or resign himself to. It was advice. A tease. A lure. All the Emperor had to do was wait for Will to bite and then reel him in. He vaguely wondered how much he would go for in the slave markets.

_Eighteen cabdas, 280 awqiyyahs, good hands, knows what doogh is. Going once for 10 darics? 10 darics? Maybe 8? 8 darics? 5?_

Five darics and a collar. Was it much different to being consort? Imperial Consort and a death sentence. It was one and the same.

He had a vivid recollection of the manservant Gidyun. It was obvious Gidyun was freeborn. And going by his attitude, probably recently too. And now he was trapped under Chiltn, forced to tip his head to other men as if they were superior simply because they’d been born into it. Will could relate.

“Oh, hello.”

It took him a moment to focus his eyes. At first, he thought the woman before him was simply a spectre from the fire. Her blazing red hair was in a halo about her head and she had on a dress of blood, cut in a skin-tight design he had never seen on any Sassanean woman. She had skin pale enough that it looked ready to bruise spontaneously and her eyes were big and blue as marbles.

“Hello?” she repeated in a thick accent, tilting her head like a bird of prey interrupted from its preening by the appearance of a particularly delicious meal.

“Er...Hi.”

“Are you here for the wedding?” she pressed, voice sweet and high, struggling over the syllables.

Will made to walk around her but she blocked him with her body, giving no heed to the fact that he was a good head taller than her. “I guess you could say that. Could you move, please?”

“Oh,” the woman smiled in realisation, “you must be the famous second consort. They told me about you.”

Carefully avoiding looking at her, Will inspected the wall art, “they?”

“The High Viziers.” She was definitely grinning; he could see it in his peripherals. “The whole palace is talking about you. Hmm...and I can see why.”

“I really have to –” he tried to move past her again but somehow the hallway seemed to have shrunk and once more she was right in front of him, staring unabashedly into his face and unnerving him to the core.

“There are all sorts of stories about you,” she mused, almost to herself. “Would you like to hear some?”

Will grit his teeth, “no.”

“They say,” she continued, ignoring him completely, “that the last time he married two consorts was so he could have one inside him while the other sucked his cock.”

The image flashed through his mind unbidden and he tried to edge around the woman, but she stepped gracefully before him and said slowly, “are you looking forward to sex with the Emperor? They say it’s a feast of a whole new kind, and that he showers his concubines and consorts with the most beautiful jewels. His chambers are said to be worth more than half your kingdom’s treasury.”

“A necklace of jewels doesn’t stop a sword no matter how hard it tries.”

She smirked, “yes.”

Pressing her face close to his, apparently inspecting his expression from different angles, she whispered, “have you ever had sexual relations with a man? Ever experimented? Have you ever been with a woman? Was it different? Which did you prefer?”

Suddenly she didn’t seem to be tripping over the language. The accent drifted away until it was barely a tingle in the background and she rapidly shot question after question at him.

“You have a perverted interest in this.”

“Not perverted,” she amended with a lilt, “merely curious. The rumours say you were unspeakably rude to the Emperor when you tried defending Alhena Bolour. They say,” she dropped her voice to a purr, “that he married you to trap you here, and discipline you for your imprudence.”

Will stared at blue eyes that flickered in the firelight. Their reflective quality distracted him and without his realising, she had her lips at his ear and was murmuring, “they say that after he’s broken you, he’ll ask you to kill Alhena as the final, ultimate punishment.”

His blood ran cold.

“Or maybe,” warm breath at his cheek, “he’ll just kill her tonight and save you for all the rest of the nights to come.”

“Why are...are you saying this? Who are you?” he shook his head as if to clear it but it only returned the pounding.

She stood back, crossed her arms, and laughed, “darling, you’re looking rather peaky. I’m just recounting what I’ve heard. It’s all in good faith. Playful conjecture, that sort of thing. Have a sense of humour, Will. It'll do you good,” she stuck out a hand, “Ambassador Freddie Lounds from Celtiberia. The pleasure’s all mine.”

He laughed, an airy sound with just a hint of hysteria, “I forgive you.” For the first time since they’d begun speaking, Freddie Lounds appeared just a mite wrong-footed. Will nodded solemnly, and explained, “as a foreigner, you’re barely fluent in our language. Things are lost in translation.”

Her eyebrows lost in her hairline, she chuckled, “I consider myself very proficient, boy.”

“Do you?” he murmured dangerously soft. The brazier crackled at their feet, throwing her alien features into sharp relief and his into deep shadow. For one moment, he was only a thundercloud with two disembodied watery eyes. “Because, Miss Lounds, in Sassanean, the words for ‘playful’ and ‘treasonous’ are very similar. And if I’m going to kill Alahna, I’ll need someone to practice on.”

Her lips parted, she searched his face, moving backwards almost unconsciously, “was that a threat?”

“A statement.”

She exhaled slowly, looking him up and down, “I think you’ll be very happy with the king. You have that killer instinct.”

Will breathed in, slow, deep, sustained. Then he quietly stepped by her and continued on his way. He no longer had an appetite for night time strolling, and only wanted to return to his own chambers. Will reached the end of the hallway and pushed through a metal door with antlers as handles. A crash of night air filled his lungs.

“Oh...” he exhaled in a gush, staring out at the scene.

A pathway tiled in slabs of square red-veined white opaque stone sloped gently downwards, breaking apart in many different directions. Under the moonlight, they snaked through the round gardens and seemed to glow. Lining both sides of the pathway, wide enough for three men to walk comfortably side by side, were palm-sized tea lights. Little circular slices of wax dyed every colour of the rainbow, their flames dancing in the breeze. Will walked down the main path and then took a sharp left, finding himself among fruit trees that buzzed with life. There were wiry ones, low to the ground with their grey, twisting branches, hanging peaches the colour of sunsets. There were huge trees with bright orange bark, glimpses of pale green showing where that bark had peeled. There were those with bone-thin trunks the colour of the night, dark bark covered in tiny pink five-petal flowers with long white strands sprouting from the centre, the few leaves a dark red, like a dragon’s tongue. There were trees carved into domes. Sausage-like berries of a deep violet hue clustered all along branches full of bumps and boils.  
He stepped over a bridge, heard the water streaming beneath it and found himself in the centre of the gardens, underneath a gigantic magnolia tree in full flower. Fallen petals lay under his feet, light mauve fading into tips of purest white. Under starlight and a million candles, beneath the giant blossoms entwining him with their sultry scent – Will closed his eyes. His elbows rested against the railing and he put head in hands.

It might have been a long time he’d been standing there, too cold to even shake, too numb to think. It might have been a second.

But presently, arms came to wrap around him. Hands clasped just below his chin and pulled him against a plane of flat chest. A head nuzzled at his neck, words murmured themselves in his ear. Will groaned, from somewhere deep inside, and let his head fall against one shoulder. Lips immediately attacked the proffered neck, pressing open-mouthed kisses to the softness under his jaw, licking at the hollow between collarbone and shoulder, sucking a bruise beneath his ear hard enough to make him moan. Will tried to twist around, but the arms clamped fast and a knee inserted itself between his legs, pressing his hips up against the bridge.

“Not so fast...”

The Emperor nipped at his earlobe and Will gasped, closed eyes flickering open. He looked down into the dark stream water, saw two figures reflected there. Then, achingly slow, the Emperor pressed forward until Will could feel his bulge drag over his ass, until he could feel every part of them stuck together, until he was entirely pinned. 

Panic and excitement blended into a bubbly, addictive brew. A scream collected at the base of his throat, as the Emperor extracted moan after moan and he was bucking into the stone bridge walls and pressing back into that hardness at the same time. He desperately reminded himself to breathe as hands lifted up the bottom of his robes, gathering the cloth until it was bunched at his waist. Will was running so hot he barely felt the cold hit his legs.

Some movement, then he deliciously bare skin against his own, thighs brushing thighs. It was becoming difficult not to shake.

“I –“

“Shh...” A hand clamped over his mouth. He thrashed.

The muffled cries were lost over the sounds of the water, the wind, cloth rustling, the Emperor’s heavy pants. Nimble fingers undid the loincloth and Will sucked on the palm on his mouth. A mockery of a kiss. He tasted salt, dust, wax, meat, metal, sweat. And a strange, bitter, not entirely unpleasant flavour that was flesh and entirely, uniquely _his husband_. Then Will was lapping at it, desperate to identify every subtlety of that taste and he might have been whining, and he might have been begging because suddenly the hand twisted and he was pulling two slender fingers into his mouth and sucking and licking and grazing hungry teeth over the skin. And the Emperor had latched onto his neck, threatening to bite own on all the bone and blood there. And his cock nudged at Will’s hole, burning and huge.  
Then he pushed in and Will cried out, letting go of the fingers which instantly locked around his neck instead, and tightened until it hurt to breathe. He felt every violent thrust, every vein, heard every obscene slap of flesh on boiling flesh like an anthem. Then when the Emperor came with the groans of a dying man, he felt the liquid warmth spurt inside him, then dribble out and down his thighs. And he was sobbing without realising it, and sliding to the freezing ground. 

There was a stinging at his neck where the man had finally bitten down at the point of orgasm. His neck felt swollen, and it hurt to swallow. He tasted blood, the effect of a split lip, accidentally gnawed raw. But nothing compared to the scorching inside him, and his thighs were wet, his ass damp with their combined sweat.  
The Emperor let his robes drop, effortlessly pristine once more.

“Tomorrow. Same time. Same place.” Then he just walked away. Not even a glance to spare.

Will let his head fall back and hit the stone bridge rails. Tears leaked from his eyes and he was unable to stop them no matter how many times he chased them away with the back of his hand.

And worst of all, far worse than anything else, was that he was painfully, twitchingly hard. Fluid leaked from the tip and his belly was so tight he felt he could probably come if the Emperor had simply spared one heated look at him.

Instead, he forced his hand around himself, gasping at the first touch. Rolling a tongue around his mouth, the last vestiges of the Emperor’s flavour lingered, and with two twists, he released all over his fingers. Before the aftershocks had even gone away, Will drew his knees to his chest and curled in on himself, struggling for breath and muffling his pain into his own sleeve.

*

_9vERQMncTXIgage2W8wCmOOYGJXEEuzOMAlFqhYCwkoPflEJIcF+_  
Jnd0JfgNa1bmpcRueUrWaKjnQqDEXO87RaFliczTOrBSCrUNLHQ=  


Fingers smoothed the sheet and began to decrypt the message. It was shoddy subterfuge but it was would do.

_So the rumours are true. If you want the Will boy to live, I suggest you move up the schedule to kill the tyrant. The Celtiberian army are assembled and at your command. We will invade as soon as Hanniba’al Lekktr is dead. FL._

A reread, then the parchment was thrown into the fire.

Just in time. The Emperor himself rounded the corner, face just a tad flushed and hair a little unruly.

“Good evening, Your Highness,” you say, bending deep and long and low.

**Author's Note:**

> Super awesome art for the Emperor and Will [here](http://mads-turbation.tumblr.com/post/54664230050)


End file.
